


Agents of Change

by lanapanda



Category: Marvel Avengers Movies Universe
Genre: F/M, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-22
Updated: 2012-11-22
Packaged: 2017-11-19 06:23:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/570174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lanapanda/pseuds/lanapanda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When you're a Handler for SHIELD at Clearance Level 7, you pick up a few things. Sometimes, you even manage to pass some of it along to people who need it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Agents of Change

Being a Handler for SHIELD at Clearance Level 7 meant there were certain requirements that had to be met. For Agent Phil Coulson, the requirements were fairly simple — facilitate the “exceptional people” when completing a mission, and don’t let the situation get out of control. How to best execute on these requirements varied from mission to mission, and from person to person, but Coulson knew his teammates well enough to predict when issues would crop up. 

 

Take Agent Barton, for example. Capable of hitting a perfect kill shot at 200 yards using a bow and arrow without physical augmentation. Able to mentally calculate trajectories and hit multiple targets approaching on different vectors simultaneously. Has a clear head for following orders, enjoyable to work with, banter within acceptable levels (while on duty). In short, a professional.   
  
But only if he trusts his Handler. Phil Coulson had been his handler for years, and the trust between them was implicit.  
  
At one point, SHIELD had tried re-assigning Agent Barton to Sitwell, on the premise of “reducing excessive outside fraternization” between mission operatives and their handlers. It… hadn’t worked out so well. Within two weeks, Sitwell was a nervous wreck because Clint Barton, consummate professional, had enlisted the aid of one Agent Natasha Romanov for an exercise in (not entirely) subtle, yet pervasive intimidation — all in fun, of course.   
  
It was nothing that would get either of them (officially) reprimanded, but when Fury slapped Agent Barton’s file back onto Coulson’s desk two weeks later, the pictures had been good for a quiet laugh in private. Coulson had tried to warn them when Fury told him about the reassignment. No one knew the intricacies of surveillance like Barton. The art of making someone feel watched, 24/7, without actually being there to watch them? That had taken Agent Romanov’s special finesse here and there.   
  
So far as the official record was concerned, Agent Phil Coulson had no idea when their two master assassins had found time or the cleverly concealed locations to take macro-detailed pictures of every vulnerable pressure point on Sitwell’s body. Or why they’d taken the time to label them and leave the occasional page of their work unattended for Sitwell to find. (See Barton file, pages 45-57: Image 101-b, Jugular. 5:34 am Outdoors. Temperature: 59° F Wind: NNE 5 MPH. Image 157-c Femoral. 2:14 pm. Indoors. Temperature: 10° F Obstructions: Double-paned glass, standard strength, ¼  inch plywood frame. Image 229-a…)   
  
Unofficially, Phil Coulson didn’t ask. He didn’t need to — a few days after Phil was back on the job, Clint had sidled up to him with a cup of Phil’s favorite coffee, a kiss, and an apology before telling Phil exactly how they’d done it.   
  
It was not a stretch to say that Phil Coulson had something of a rapport with the team members in his care. Because of that, he was expected to get results. So when they handed him Tony Stark’s file for the second time, Phil knew something was amiss, beyond the medical evaluation (Palladium poisoning? Christ.) and the personality profile that Agent Romanov had compiled.   
  
To further complicate matters, Stark wasn’t a member of the team, and unlike every other person Phil interacted with, you didn’t “build a rapport” with Tony Stark. You had a rapport with Tony Stark. It was instant and brilliant and held zero-basis in actual reality. If you weren’t careful, Stark would have you smiling and laughing and completely distracted from the fact that you should be highly pissed off by whatever shenanigans he’d pulled in the interim.   
  
He was rich. He was spoiled. Every document they had on him said use the shortest leash imaginable and don’t let your guard down. And as much as Phil Coulson actually liked Tony Stark, Agent Coulson knew that promising to taze him was the fastest way to cut through the bullshit and get the job done. So he had.  
  
It wasn’t until after Tony came back from the office carrying the cumbersome display model of the first Stark Expo that Phil began to realize what was remiss.  Personality profiles, behavioral analysis, relationship analysis, predictive scenarios… SHIELD had all the data in the world about Tony Stark’s personality issues but not even a paragraph about the most important factors to success for his mission.   
  
“How do you work, Stark?” Agent Coulson mused aloud as he paced in the den, flipping through the paperwork one last time, looking for a clue. There was nothing in Tony Stark’s file that talked about his actual working conditions or what made him more productive.   
  
The “Cave Incident” was well-documented in the sense that SHIELD knew the timetables. Three months to produce a prototype-version of the suit, working by hand without the benefit of power tools or computerized modeling. That indicated Tony Stark had the ability to sustain intense focus over long periods of time while being denied certain basic living comforts, but as far as Stark’s ideal working conditions at home? They had almost nothing.   
  
Not even Agent Romanov had managed to get much closer than the usual flirting distance Stark put between himself and attractive women that could file a credible sexual harassment lawsuit. People that could shed more light on Tony Stark as a person and perhaps how he worked — Ms. Potts, Lt. Col. Rhodes — were not kept in the loop either when it came to Tony’s personal R&D. It seemed that the gregarious, always inclusive Tony Stark that presented himself to the public at large did a complete 180 wherever the Iron Man project was involved and suddenly turned into a hermit.   
  
The projections SHIELD had at their disposal were equally useless in making a prediction on working conditions. Howard Stark had been effusive about his son in public, but if Fury’s recent conversations with Tony Stark were to be taken as truth, there had been no positive interactions between father and son  that would lay the groundwork for Tony to conduct his research and experimentation in the same manner that his father had.   
  
Which meant Agent Coulson was going to have to perform that evaluation on the fly, along with the assessment as to whether or not Stark was making any progress at all. He snapped the folder shut and put it away into its secured case without a second glance. 


End file.
